Counting down to Rangers-Isles (updated)

Who would have thought a month ago this would be a huge game for the Rangers. It seems like they’ve hit “bottom” a few times recently — the 10-2 loss in Dallas, the 5-2 loss to the Flyers on Sunday, but a loss to the awful Islanders at home might make a new low.

Tom Reney is staying optimistic.

“We are in this together, the coaching staff and the players, and I know that group in our locker room cares an awful lot about what it means to be a New York Ranger,” Renney said at the morning skate today. “I believe that if we trust the system and do the right things, we have the people and the leadership in order to succeed.”

I was listening to the first period on the radio and Dave Maloney noted that his brother, Don, the Phoenix GM and two of the Coyotes’ scouts are in the house. You know that Sather only likes to deal with his buddies and people he knows. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

“My first couple of years with the Capitals, they definitely tried to steer me away from playing offensively or making any types of plays,” Green said this week. “As an offensive-minded guy, it really limited what I could do and therefore,I wasn’t very effective.

“So now, with the free reins I have with Bruce, you can really use your skills.”

Hi all. I am a guess poster, today i will fill in for Beer Me! Bob (yes that is his real name) couldn’t come because he is ashamed of himself and he is definitely doesn’t like to be WRONG! So, I offered to fill in for him and take all the abuse that he deserves! So fire away boys!

Son, this blog was run like a machine when Sam was here. This place is full of random throw-ins and random nobodies. This guy Carp doesnt have time to go to the practices so he wont be up on his ? Why does this blog exist? So people can talk about the rangers- just in general.

You know what I hate? When Ranger fans start fighting with Ranger fans over a guest blogger- who probably isn’t even a friggin Ranger fan. Take a seat Chief.

The D’s not scoring goals, to go with their low shooting percentage is critical, in that this would be one small way to pick up the lack of a PP. So no real D scoring, no PP, not much even-strength offense, safe to say this team has merely a PK and a goalie who is regressing from the lack of offensive and defensive support in front of him, as its strong suits. And yet, Tom Renney’s job is safe.

Pit and Ottawa canned their coach, but we have a keeper, apparently. Or else Pit and Ottawa CARE about winning more than we do. Name, if you can, one organization in the league that stands pat during this combination drought/depression the Rangers are experiencing? Imagine Montreal going through this and not making changes. Imagine a Steinbrenner team letting something like this get out of hand to this degree? It is unfathomable that this team can be allowed to get worse with each passing week, with no redress coming from the top, whatsoever. And picking up another G.D. Backman-type at the last minute is NOT redress, Slats. You already picked up Rozy, Redden, Kalinin, Reitz, and Mara when he was a total bust, understanding it took him 1 1/2 seasons here to raise the level of his game. More players should strive to do that, except under Renney, few of them do.

The Chief
A legendary fan of the Rangers during the 1970s and 1980’s who donned an Indian headress complete with Ranger facepaint. At one game an Islander fan stole the headress and was chased by almost an entire section of Ranger fans. They returned moments later with the headress and the Islander jersey the fan was wearing.

Here is the link for the game tonight, well this is the schedule so they have the game posted twice which means they will have both broadcasts tonight. When it comes up at 7 I will post the Rangers telecast.

The Chief
February 18th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
“The Chief
A legendary fan of the Rangers during the 1970s and 1980’s who donned an Indian headress complete with Ranger facepaint. At one game an Islander fan stole the headress and was chased by almost an entire section of Ranger fans. They returned moments later with the headress and the Islander jersey the fan was wearing.”

I remember him well. The people near me one night at MSG starting call him “Schmoe-hawk.”

staal wart… u miss spelled the name of the PRESIDENT!!! How dare YOU! Where is this country coming too!! Unacceptable!!

No but seriously… is this the day? they’ll probably win tonight and Renney (double N) will say something like ” quite honestly, at the end of the day we went to square one… then we took the square root of 1 and multiplied it by a platitude and basically won the game in a shootout”

If the Rangers lose tonight on the postgame I want to hear John Giaone down by the locker room saying Tom Renney has not been made available to the media, and is talking to Glenn Sather, but if they lose, and were to fire him do you think they do it tonight or tomorrow?

If we dont beat Gordons finest fishies tonight we got some hugggggeeee problems to deal with in the morning….on second thought if we do beat them we still got huggggeee problems …so damn where do we go from here…..

1)Toss Renney
2)Trade Gomez ( teams are still interested in him)
3) Package redden with the likes of a dawes or prucha to get him the hell out.
4)sign kovalchuk
5)Wave voros
6)Bring up Potter and avery
7) If possible find another D-man and trash Kalinin
8) and hell while were at it take sather and drop him off in the middle of the alantic ocean

Zhervalev
February 18th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Redden looks lost out there. WTF is wrong with him!?!?!?!?
—————————————————————
He knows the fans hate him, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the rest of the team VISIBLY seems reluctant to even pass him the puck.

***********************************************

Yeah but that last play, Cally jumps off the bench and beats him to the playing coming down on LQ to make the defensive play. That just shouldnt happen!

guys redden obviously is just at the bottom with his confidence. he needs a goal so bad. i wish the fans would stop booing him relentlessly it just makes it worse for him. if he gets a goal it’ll help him tremendously.

As much as I always agree with you on most points. Kalinin has tightened up his game much more than Redden has. I mean Redden looks COMPLETELY lost out there. He was wandering around in the corner at LQ’s right side. WHY??? WTF for? There was nobody there!! But he was skating around there and it wasnt the end of his shift. Bonehead play after bonehead play. I’d take Kalinin over Redden any day now.

Seeing as how the coaching staff cant motivate these players, he has to take it upon himself. He does it to himself. Whether his judgement is clouded or whatever it is. He needs to work on his weakness. There is no shame in asking for help. He 9/10 makes the wrong decision on a play. If knows he doesnt have the same speed he used to, then he shouldnt be pinching the play, like he did mid way through the first. PLayers are going to BLOW right by him. If you know what your weakness are, either dont make those mistakes or correct him. Im sorry but he just isnt the player he used to be and he hasnt been in some time.

ford, I qualified my statement in that exact way. The worst part about Redden (on the ice) isn’t his play, it’s how much ice time he gets and in what situations. It’s argument #1 on why Renney should be fired.

yea mako, no doubt hes never gonna live up to half of what was expected of him. i just know hes better than what hes shown. i just want him to get a goal to maybe get the monkey off his back a little. but at the same token, if he isnt scoring,make damn sure you play hard and he isnt doin that

ford, I qualified my statement in that exact way. The worst part about Redden (on the ice) isn’t his play, it’s how much ice time he gets and in what situations. It’s argument #1 on why Renney should be fired.”

Exactly, Doodie. It’s like groundhog day. He really has no reason to change his game. According to him, everything is ok. Imagine if the boss kept giving the same job to a guy even after he messed it up over and over and over. Same thing here.

I always knew Redden would not live anywhere near up to his contract and had a strong feeling he’d be the new Garden whipping boy… But not in my wildest nightmares did I ever expect the warm diaper load that he really is. I have no DOUBT in my mind the cocaine rumors are true. I just hope he gets caught redhanded as soon as possible.

ya know, I’m kinda feeling bad for Redden, he did have talent at one point and things have definitely gone south on him in the last few years. Looks like the change of scenery did NOT do him any good. Maybe he’ll do the smart thing and RETIRE at the end of the season!!!

By the way I jus want to give a history lesson to the newb Ranger fans who have crushes on Czech tree elves: Petr Prucha has a dedicated fan base because he scored 30g in his rookie season, most of which came on the PP, and 22 the following year with limited ice/PP time.

AF76, from your fingertips to Renney’s or Sather’s eyes! How is it that the smallest guys on the team have the most energy and balls?? (Cally leading the team in hits, Pru lasting longer in a scrum that Virus….)

Watching Islanders broadcast. Fischler asks Gomez if he ever gets tired playing the way he does. Gomez says, “I only get tired of you.” Gomez then gives real answer that he thinks he hasn’t actually been playing that way this year.

Only Renney can play a player and make it seem like he’s a healthy scratch. Unless my eyes deceived me, I believe Prucha only got ONE shift all period. Sather is a problem, but crappy decisions like that, benching a fan favorite, is why I HATE Tom Renney.

“try flipping the laptop upside down… u’ll see what the islanders announcers see”

lol, i KNEW there had to be some kind of secret! I thought they were watching highlights from his days on the devils! Well, he DID score tonight..that must mean Dawes is the 2nd best player on the ice.

thanks kaspar. i have serious video lag here so i’m missing a lot of the action. When the audio and video ARE in sync, they seem to be playing much better tonight than they have in a while. And there’s been some ‘gatherings’ after the whistle that they are not backing away from, maybe the tide is turning??

well kaspar maybe just maybe since Gomez is sort of flying tonight why not switch some players around… maybe put Nik and Prucha on the line with Gomer… let the natural shooters take his passes… but then again… wtf do i know?

couple things:
give prucha the A, hell rather have him as the C than drury

cally works his tail off but he should absolutely not be on the pp and drury has a terrible shot and doesnt know how to play defense so to use him on the point is just dumb. drury’s only value on offense is junk goals, so he should be camped out by the net

second altho the isles didnt score on their pp yet, it looks a lot better than ours, they actually generated chances

gomez got a fluke goal and now the announcers are going on like he is mario out there

3rd period was a little on the brutal side, but they got the win, scored more than 2, and they actually showed signs of life! Now to keep it going! As Tom might say, they need to build on this win, to keep the battle level up.

Howie Rose at the end of the game said Tom could work that gum with a little less angst… That was classic.

No post game here, what am I missing besides probably another Gomez interview?

see thats what happens when u stick to rennys system!!!! wow im so confident right now in this team i cant wait to watch them eek out another 1 goal game against another farm team and their goalie(who basically stopped almost everything we could throw at him except for a lucky goober of a shot from senor guacomole

“it doesn’t matter, win or lose, it’s just so hard to watch these games or get excited over anything this team does anymore

I’m pretty sure most NYR fans, if they’re honest with themselves, would admit the same thing”

honestly, i think we’re just looking for things to be happy about. It’s been a long, brutal month, and, at least for me, being down about them this much is becoming a lot of work!!! I want to look on the bright side, and hope they come out of this horrendous malaise they all seem to be in. Granted, if they DO make the playoffs, it may not be for long, but whatever they can do to salvage the rest of the season, I think a lot of us would give them some kind of credit for it.

It’s quite obvious that management and ownership are not changing any time soon, so we just have to hope these guys play for pride in themselves, in their teammates, in the franchise and for the fans the rest of the way.

Well, at least we know what it takes for this team to win: Henrik Lundqvist has to play like the best goalie in the world AND get involved in the offense. Hank with the assist; next game he’s going for a goal. Someone’s gotta get this offense going.

– Petr Prucha has twice the heart of any skater on the Rangers…

– If Gomez plays like that all the time, and displays the same level of effort, I’ll have much less of a problem with his being on this team. He’s still overpaid, but if he performs like that, it’s tolerable.

linda- howie rose n billy jaffe are pretty comedic duo. i like jaffe i wish we could trade announcers and send them down to hartford for speech therapy, verbal diahrea, etc… is it me or does sam look like if he lived in texas or somethin the rednecks might mistake him for a turkey and shoot him. with his jiggly jowels and bird beak nose

I don’t want to see Prucha traded, but since he isn’t being played here, I would like to see him get real playing time somewhere else. Prucha was a player that was brought in for Jagr appeasement. Maybe they are punishing him for that. Either way, the kid has heart and skills. If the Rangers are going to forever refuse to play him, then I hope he finds success somewhere else. This management regime doesn’t deserve him. Let them sign some other gutless 4th line cast-off from some other team and ask him to be a 30 goal scorer.

linda- great post, its kinda like at this point, yea we know they still suck and whatever but im just happy we got a win. im tired of bein negativei mean yea its the isles, but they showed some fire and emotion. and sometimes it takes a win against a crap team to get you goin and just imagine if they lost, id feel alot worse for the game at buff. now at least they got some confidence to bring next game. still not close to being contenders but i hate losing. did anyone hear at the end of the game rose said redden with a sort of giggle and then shut up. they really wanted to rip him one and they did alot during the game but it sounded like rose had somethin funny he was gonna say but knew he shouldnt. lol

‘is it me or does sam look like if he lived in texas or somethin the rednecks might mistake him for a turkey and shoot him. with his jiggly jowels and bird beak nose’

well, i do live in alabama, which is world renowned for rednecks too. Unfortunately, i don’t live in the “REAL” alabama, that’s maybe a 20 mile drive from here, but I’ll tell you one thing…Sam would stick out like a sore thumb here! He’s so…so…so WHITE! And by that I mean, pale, milky, elmers glue like! 20 miles away from me, they just might shoot him and put him in de ol’ turkey fryer! Poor sam, he’s just gettin old!

Mako..thats just insane! he needs to cut the comedy routine and freakin play like he cares and is not just collecting his millions! And maybe with $20 of those millions he can buy himself a book of jokes and quips! Hell, if I was his mother, at this point I’d be telling him how nonchalant he’s been,how his efforts lately have sucked, he looks lazy and disinterested, that he was a disgrace to the family, and to alaska, for not playing with the heart of a champion! Shaken player syndrome!!! In other words, I’d beat him with a dvd collection of his 150 interviews since he’s been a Ranger!

Gomez is THE prime example of what poor coaching will do to a hard working player. Gomez left it on the ice every night last season. He didn’t click with Jagr like he was supposed to but you could SEE that he was doing everything he could do to play HIS game at 100% regardless of what others were doing.

This season, he’s disappeared long stretches at a time and has been visibly disinterested in the games. Gomez is (was?) a hard worker who got a very disciplined NHL foundation by one of the best, no bullshit organizations in the league.

He’s NOT Gretzky but he’s a great player who’s been a key player in two Cup championships. Blame Renney for letting Gomez gradually discover that he can get away with murder in NY.

I was at the game tonight via my friend’s uncle who got a suite and my friend invited me. When we left we all had to take the elevator down and its packed in the elevator. I look up and see gravey. I told him congrats on getting ur number retired and he held the door open for everyone.

I had the opportunity to meet Gomez once after the PHX loss last year (5-1) through a mutual friend in the Garden Family room. He was beyond pissed about the game. I remember walking away impressed how much more hockey players give a crap vs other sports. From my experience i find it hard to believe he is just cashing checks.

Apperently he’s becoming more of a team player in DET. Dropped the gloves tonight in defense of teammates and saved a special puck for a teammate after a goal as well… who knows, maybe he’ll stay there…

I think that the car maker Audi is throwing away their marketing dollars…During the Rangers telecast, the Iceholes get a penalty and Sam Rosen says, “The New York Rangers Power play is brought to you by Audi”….

Knowing that Audi sponsors this horrible PP, I would never buy one now….If Audi really wanted to make an impact with us fans, they should have Sam say something like –

“The Wade Redden sucks sentiment shared by all NY Rangers fans is brought to you by Audi”….

I was lucky enough to be in the second row for that game last night and I watched very carefully. Sorry, it isn’t the talent level. The Rangers have eons more talent. It is absolutely, 100% the coaching that is the problem. Gomez has nobody to pass to because guys aren’t coached as to how to get open, where to hit the seams, where to go. There is no sustained attack at all because the team sits back in a 1-2-2 as often as they can. The defensemen never jump into the play and whatever talents Redden does have are completely buried in this system. And the PP and defensive zone coverage remain anemic and atrocious, respectably, and those are all coaching issues. Remeber Streit’s goal off him cutting back door? I found myself mid-third period screaming “back door, back door” (I was sitting in that zone) as Streit did it again, luckily the Isles couldn’t get him the puck.

guys if youre worried about renny, dont. he wont be coaching this team next season when they barely squeeze into the PO and get b slapped out by boston or joisey. and if he is still the coach, then you know sather is indeed rotting in the msg vault with al trautwig

One win, 2pts, woop-tee-doo. A soft goal by Gomer and an empty netter to make it 3-1. We crushed them. “Really gave the Isles something to think about,” is what Renney is saying now I am sure.

Dru-Pru-Dawes the best line on the ice. No question. How Prucha cannot be playing the powerplay is still a mystery to me. The kid is all heart.

Don Maloney at the game last night…figures…he’s one of only about 5 GMs in the league who will even talk to Sather. Him, JD, Kevin Lowe, and maybe one or two other guys who fleeced Sather back when Leetch and Kovalev were dumped are the only guys who take his calls. I will say this, if Marc Staal gets traded for anyone, I might put a bounty on Sather’s head, Reggie Dunlop-style. Should we speculate? Gretzky surely wants a kid like Prucha. That would be my first guess. Jovanovski? Can we even afford that dude? Is he as old as Naslund? I don’t know any of their players other than that kid Boedker who they would NEVER part with. I would trade Staal for that kid….that much I WILL say.

Any updates on Avery? I heard some comments above, but anyone have a link to see him in action?

Looking at the next 5 games….Buffalo, Toronto x 2, FL, and Colo….I mean if I didn’t witness the last 10 games, I would say we should get 8 of 10 points in the next 5. But with this team, we could just as easily get 2 of 10.

I have a feeling Renney may keep his job for now and get quiely moved on in the summer (to a front office position) – any sacking of Renney now would simply put pressure on Slats to go too.

Maloney is going to be looking for young and cheap talent – Dawes, Dubi, Cally, Staal, Girardi should be on his shopping list (plus some of the guys in Hartford – AA, Sangs, Sauer, Parenteau, Byers). Its up to Slats to negotiate without using most of those names – but he’d have to be a hypnotist to convince another GM to take Dreaden or Virus.
I would say the most vulnerable at the moment are: Prucha, Dawes, Dubinsky, Kalinin and possibly Roszival – the others who the fans might want to move have no-trade’s or prohibitive contracts.

I don’t know how much of a great trade we could make with PHX. They’re hurting for cash, and the most beneficial trades for us would be ones in which we dump large, long-term contracts (Redden, etc). Can PHX afford those?

Otherwise, it’s just shifting spare parts around, and nothing that will fix a fundamental flaw in our roster.

The only player I would be interested in is Doan. Otherwise, not a whole lot of talent is in that club. Dont know why there always has to be transaction between our two clubs. Sather you SUCK, you’ve alienated more than half the NHL to trade to and from!!!!

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